Search

A large amount of IT vendors are now really adopting social as part of their approach. The only trouble is the IT buyer has been in this “phase” for the last several years. Vendors just did not believe it. While the social revolution took place the buyer has moved into the personal not social world. Most companies will catch up around 2017 – 2020 ish. :)

One of the major problems at technology start up’s today is the lack of understanding of how much sales and marketing principles have changed.“If I need to double revenue growth, I need to double my sales force to drive it” or “I need to generate 1,000 leads to generate one sale. Therefore 2,000 leads will generate two sales.”

This does not make sense and management teams are confusing correlation and causality. A vendor who believes in this may as well claim, “Christmas trees cause Christmas.” The majority of technology start up management teams are still under the influence of the 1980’s and 1990’s mind set. Sales and marketing has changed so much that it is amazing. The problem today: Not generating enough qualified pipeline and sales to hit and exceed estimated revenue targets.

Here are the two major root assumptions among executives, founders and VC firms that cause the majority of the problem:

1. I need to double my revenue, therefore I need to double my sales team, and2. Salespeople can find new business on their own

No they won’t. They may find some but not enough to feed themselves. Here’s why:

1. Salespeople are terrible at prospecting. Sometimes it has takes 30 – 40 attempts to break into a company and qualify a brand new opportunity. Salespeople usually stop after 4 – 5 times.

2. Salespeople hate to prospect and do the upfront work to drive demand. Salespeople want to sell – not drive demand.

3. Even if a salesperson does some prospecting, as soon as they generate some pipeline, they become too busy to prospect. It is not sustainable. This is why ramp up times are so much longer than anticipated.

Salespeople do not cause customer acquisition growth, they fulfill it.

It’s a huge shift in thinking. Of course a company needs more salespeople if they are getting bigger, but this is not the main cause of new customer growth. Marketing, awareness, demand generation and engagement causes new customer acquisition and sales fulfills that demand generated by marketing. There aren’t any quick fixes to this problem. However, there are ways to solve this. I have outlined, in brief, a few ideas below for you to consider. These are especially important for companies with a high volume sales model.

1. Trial-and-error in awareness, demand generation (requires patience, experimentation, money) MUST be a true combination of sales and marketing team working together. I jokingly call this SMARKETING but it works.

2. Use CRM religiously and track, track, track.

3. Have patience in building great word-of-mouth. This is the highest value lead generation source, but the hardest to influence.

4. Create a well supported sales development team with resources. This is by far the most predictable source of pipeline, but it takes time and focus (ties in to point # 1.) This is the BEST indicator of pipeline generation in the short term. We did this at a previous company and took the business from $1.25 million to $6 Million.

5. Use PR & Social media outreach on a consistent basis.

6. Find the right network.

7. Target social networks that are relevant.

8. Listen.

9. Engage.

10. Track results.

11. Calculate the amount of qualified pipeline your company needs to generate on a monthly basis? Most start up’s do not know this.